Archive for the ‘Microsoft Fun’ Category

When migrating a customer to for example Microsoft Office 365, most of the time we install a ADFS environment to. With ADFS you create a single sign-on experience (SSO) for your users. Within Windows Server 2012 R2, ADFS is a default server role, which can be enabled really easily. After the installation, you’ve to configure some options and you’re ready to rock!

The default logon screen of ADFS is not that nice. Some basic colors and no custom branding. In the most environments our customers wanted to have some custom branding. There’re a few things you can change on the logon screen. For example:

The company text;

The company logo;

The big picture on the left side of the page;

Helpdesk URL’s;

etc…

In this example I’ve changed the ADFS logon screen with our new company branding. Within a few minutes, the logon screen looks really different and ‘personal’ (heeeey….that’s me!!! 🙂 )

## Change the company name
Set-AdfsGlobalWebContent -CompanyName "Lab Environment ADFS"
## Change the company logo
Set-AdfsWebTheme -TargetName default -Logo @{path="C:\ADSF_branding\Ictivity_Logo_Small.png"}
## Change the left side of the page
Set-AdfsWebTheme -TargetName default -Illustration @{path="C:\ADSF_branding\Ictivity_Logo_Large.png"}

As you can see, it’s really great to customize your ADFS logon screen with your company branding. In this example it’s really personal, because the picture on the logon screen is ME!! 🙂

This book assumes that you are familiar with key concepts surrounding Windows Server (i.e., Microsoft Hyper-V, Networking, and Storage) as well as cloud technologies such as Microsoft Azure. In this book, we cover a variety of concepts related to the technology and present scenarios with a customer focus, but it is not intended as a how-to or design manual. You can use other sources, including the online Microsoft resources, to stay up to date with the latest developments on the roles and features of Windows Server 2016. The online resources will also contain the latest how-to procedures and information about designing a Windows Server 2016 infrastructure for your business.

Microsoft has released the “Media creation tool” for Windows 10. With this tool you can create your own installation media for installing Windows 10 on multiple devices, using USB flash of DVD.
Within a few stepts you’ve your own installation media and the party can begin 🙂

When you’ve configured mailbox quota’s within your Exchange 2010/2013 environment, you’ve to check the configuration sometimes. Using Microsoft PowerShell, you can watch the current configuration within a few second, so this is extremely powerfull!! But, when you have to query for some specific user or result, it’s not that easy.

There’s a very usefull command within PowerShell that I’m using almost for all my scripts….Out-GridView. When using the parameter Out-GridView, the results are not showing within the PowerShell screen, but in a separate window! Within this window, you can very easy add some search criteria….for example: specific user, quota or an overview per database.

One requirement is that the Windows Feature “Windows PowerShell Integrated Scripting Environment (ISE)” is installed on the Exchange servers or mangement server from where you’re running the commands.

1.) Open the Exchange Management Shell (EMS)
2.) For an overview of the current mailbox quota, use the following command.
Get-Mailbox -Identity mswinkels | ft Name, IssueWarningQuota, ProhibitSendQuota, ProhibitSendReceiveQuota
3.) The results of this command is shown within the PowerShell window
4.) Now we’re running the same command, but replace “ft” (format-table) with “select” and add the parameter “Out-GridView”
Get-Mailbox -Identity mswinkels | Select Name, IssueWarningQuota, ProhibitSendQuota, ProhibitSendReceiveQuota | Out-GridView
5.) Now the results are in a separate window! Extreme usefull when you’ve have to search for a specific result or results.

Microsoft has released a new version of Microsoft Server 2016 Technical Preview 2, so I’ve installed this version immediately within my Hyper-V environment. After starting the setup, you’ll see there’re two versions:

Windows Server Technical Preview 2

Windows Server Technical Preview 2 (with local admin tools)

The difference between theese two versions is the User Experience. In previous version of Windows, it was called Windows Server Core Edition. So the version without the local admin tools, the user has no option to enable/install the graphical user interface (GUI).

After the installation, you’ll see that there’s a difference between the User Experience. One version, the Server Manager is available and the other version has only a command prompt available. You’ve to manage this server from another server with the Remote Server Administrative Tools (RSAT). The version with the admin tools included, there’s a possibility to enable the Graphical User Interface (GUI).

After a reboot, the server is turned on with a Graphical User Interface (GUI) and it looks pretty cool!! And YESSSS, the start menu is back again 🙂 What a great time for some users!! With this new version of Windows Server, there’s is a complete new “world of bits and bytes”….

When you do a lot of deployments whitin your Windows 8.1 Client Hyper-V machine, the disk space is getting more and more. Because I’ve only one SSD drive of 250 GB, the free space becomes critical. I’ve got to find a way to reduce it. I read a few blogs and found a solution which is the dedup. But data deduplication is not available whitin Windows 8.1.

This method is not officially supported by Microsoft ,however found a way to save my disk space.

This method requires the CAB files from the Windows Server 2012 R2. Either you can get those files from a Windows Server 2012 R2 or you can download the files from my OneDrive here.
The files are as follow :
• Microsoft-Windows-Dedup-Package~31bf3856ad364e35~amd64~en-US~6.3.9600.16384.cab
• Microsoft-Windows-Dedup-Package~31bf3856ad364e35~amd64~~6.3.9600.16384.cab
• Microsoft-Windows-FileServer-Package~31bf3856ad364e35~amd64~en-US~6.3.9600.16384.cab
• Microsoft-Windows-FileServer-Package~31bf3856ad364e35~amd64~~6.3.9600.16384.cab
• Microsoft-Windows-VdsInterop-Package~31bf3856ad364e35~amd64~en-US~6.3.9600.16384.cab
• Microsoft-Windows-VdsInterop-Package~31bf3856ad364e35~amd64~~6.3.9600.16384.cab

I downloaded the files to a folder as below and installed all the CAB files:

Next step is to install the CAD files on your Windows 8.1 machine. I’ve used DISM to install these files.

After you’ve succesfully installed the CAB files, you’re able to install the “Data Deduplication” role. I’ve also used DISM (see screenshot below).

The next step is to enable Data Deduplication on the volume or volumes. First I’ve readthe current free space on my E: drive. After enabling Data Deduplication on this volume, I’ve manually started the Data Dedup task.

But after enabling Data Depuplication and running the Dedup Job, there’s nothing happening!! Why?? Because the minimumFileAgeDays is 3 and my files on the hard drives are 2 days old 🙂 So I’ve added the MinimumFileAgeDays to 0 (zero days). After running the Dedup Job again, let’s have a look on the current free space!! Dedup is doing his job!!! 🙂 Cool!

The final screenshot are the commands I’ve used to configure this in my lab environment. Once again, this method is not officially supported by Microsoft.It’s a great way to save some disk space on your expensive SSD hard drive! Now you can deploy more virtual machines on the same hard drive, so happy automation and deployment!! 🙂

When you’ve to install a new Microsoft Exchange 2013 environment, you can start collecting all the necessary things, just lik pre-requisites etc…but there is a script available in the Microsoft TechNet Gallery. This script does the trick for you fully unattended. You just have to give in some names and paths. The script downloads all the pre-requisites, installs all the necessary Windows roles and features and installs Exchange 2013 the way you like 🙂

All you have to download is the Microsoft Exchange 2013 ISO and create some destination folders, that’s it!! You can also choose to install a multi role Exchange 2013 environment or maybe a multi server Exchange 2013 environment where you’ve multiple mailbox (MBX) and client access (CAS) servers. In my lab environment I’ve installed one multi role server in just a few clicks!! Below the commands I’ve used.